How to make sense of the brain's billions of neurons

A unique global collaboration has produced a new technology that will transform the way we study the brain. Neuropixels allow simultaneous recordings from many hundreds of neurons over multiple brain regions.

The first generation of neuropixel probes has been released to scientists worldwide.

Update31 October 2018

Neuropixels technology now available to buy

Imec is making Neuropixels probes available commercially to the global neuroscience community from 31 October 2018. Researchers can get information about applying for and using the probes at www.neuropixels.org.

Neuropixels were developed by a consortium of the Allen Institute for Brain Science, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and University College London with grant funding from the Gatsby Charitable Foundation and Wellcome, in collaboration with nanoelectronics research institute Imec.

To even begin to understand the complexities of the brain we need to measure the concerted activity of countless single neurons all over the brain at the same time. Until recently, no one thought that was possible.

The Neuropixels probes are thinner than a human hair, each with 960 recording sites and 384 channels that produce high-definition, high-quality data about brain activity. The tiny, super-sensitive electrodes record the pulse of multiple neurons and then digitise those signals.

Tim Harris, senior fellow at the Janelia Research Campus, led the collaboration of brain scientists and engineers to create the probes.

The engineering had three phases:

finding a new material for the probe and testing it for performance and stability

testing the programmable technology in the probe's shank and the electronics in its base

testing the fully integrated probe.

Matteo Carandini led one of the UCL laboratories that tested the prototypes and contributed the code most other labs use to interpret the probes' output.

He says that the scientific challenge – how to record hundreds of individual neurons in many different regions of the mouse brain – was huge. But in one respect it was simple.

"The tool did not exist, so it had to be built. Sometimes it's necessary to seek new technologies, and to go beyond the confines of the laboratory."

Shared risk, shared benefits

The scale of the collaboration has been integral to the success of the project. It would have been a very risky project for a single laboratory. Collaboration has meant that not only are the work and benefits shared, but also the risk.

And collaboration also has huge scientific benefits. "Both within the lab and across labs, other people invariably come up with better solutions. In fact, often they already know the solutions," says Matteo. "All you need to do is ask them."

Watch Professors Anne Churchland and Matteo Carandini explain how the probes will record and share data in real time.

Initially, the probes will be used on the brains of mice. A project is being planned to produce a probe for recording in non-human primates.

It's likely that one day these kind of probes will be inserted into the brain of human patients, for example people who are completely paralysed and need to move robotic arms through the brain activity. This is still fairly far away. But ambitious research to finesse the next generation of probes is already underway.

"Neuropixels will advance the understanding of the function of individual brain regions, but most especially the coordinated activity of multiple brain regions."

Tim Harris, senior fellow, Janelia Research Campus

Collectively, different labs can finally look at what is happening throughout an entire mouse brain and this could radically alter our existing knowledge about which brain regions are involved in different behaviours, and how brain disorders alter our neural circuits.

Virtual lab

Neuropixel probes will be used by the International Brain Lab, a 'virtual lab' that brings together 21 leading neuroscience groups from around the world. Neuroscientists will work together to understand a single behaviour in mice. This novel approach will allow greater insight into learning and decision making than any single lab could achieve alone.

Error on the "I agree to receive this newsletter." field.Please check this box to agree to our terms and conditions.

Error on the "I agree to receive this newsletter." field.Please check this box to agree to our terms and conditions.

We use a third party provider, Dotmailer, to deliver our newsletters. For information about how we handle your data, please read our privacy notice. You can unsubscribe at any time using links in the emails you receive.